


Revelry

by castiiron



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Can be read as James/Francis, Carnivale (The Terror), Gen, Introspection, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Podfic Available, before it all goes horribly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castiiron/pseuds/castiiron
Summary: Francis catches sight of James in disguise. Carried above the crowd in celebration of something Francis has missed. Roman red and gold and triumphantly bellowing. For the few honest seconds before James spots him, he is a man Francis does not recognise as his second.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier & Commander James Fitzjames, Captain Francis Crozier & Thomas Jopson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Revelry

**Author's Note:**

> Some Francis thoughts as he walks through Carnivale, but more sappy, because I can do what I want, and Francis deserves to feel good. Written with the intention for it to be Francis/James but it came out more subdued than I expected so! Can be read as either.

When Francis sets foot on deck again after three weeks spent sweating through his swaddle of blankets, the bite of the arctic hits him fresh. Months of incremental drops in temperature makes it easy to forget how bitter the cold is, and twenty-one days in feverish daze is almost long enough for Francis to forget where they are. His boot slips on the stairs. He blames it on the ice and not the shakes that rattle his bones still. 

Jopson has a hand on his elbow, steady. Steady temperament, steady disposition. Jopson and his steady gaze and steady nursing, not fretting, not flitting; purposeful movements that made him the only company Francis could bear. 

Carnivale lights up the forever-dark of the cold months - coldest months. Jopson reminds him of the imminent sunrise and Francis struggles to remember what the heat of the sky feels like against his skin. Even in his fever dreams, where he saw English summers in plain clarity, his consciousness neglected any natural warmth. 

The city of tents that sit against the milky-green twists in the sky is no hallucination of his own, but one of James’, and it’s incomprehensible to Francis that now is the time for any kind of celebration. It could be the drink still in him, the nausea still cloying to the back of his throat, the shock of the cold making him miserable; he thinks this is not a place for frolicking and dress-up. There are less exuberant ways to raise morale. 

Then again James has always been one for exaggeration. It made complete and utter sense to Francis that it would only seep into his captaincy. 

There are hand-woven swans in the entrance.

The maze makes his body ache, just well enough to walk in a straight line, not well enough to deal with the pivoting. Jopson seems to know where to go and Francis wonders if he had also taken part in the construction. Surely he would have overheard the planning, at least. 

“Did you mention this to me? While I was ill?”

“On occasion, sir.” 

“I do not recall the details.” 

“It is to be expected, you were somewhere else, perhaps. I spoke about it when you were fitful. Not just Carnivale, the general day-to-day.” Jopson pulls him out of the way of a stumbling Marine, who looks at Francis with no recognition of title. “I sewed the tablecloths,” Jopson says.

“Yet you didn’t want to come?”

“I had no mind to leave you unwell on an empty ship.” 

Francis bites his tongue. Jopson is proud of what the men have accomplished, it’s in his voice, in the way he looks around the room. The last of their resources. Replacement sails strung up as awnings, rigging twisted together for ribbons, bed sheets for buntings. 

It’s a far cry from home, and Francis finds himself more nauseous the deeper they wade. Men are loose limbed, inhibitionless. Lieutenant Irving, dressed as an angel, is singing a poor rendition of a song too upbeat, with no shame. It’s embarrassing to watch so they move on. 

He is glad to see Thomas again, who lights up when he spots Francis through the throng. He is drinking from his prosthetic and Francis, in that moment, feels the most put together of all the men, which might be humorous in a handful of years; if they are to survive to tell the tale of Carnivale. For now it is only mortifying. 

Francis struggles to recognise his crew behind masks, behind their undisciplined stupor. Dressed in women’s gowns, full at the skirt. Long robes and faux beards, paper crowns. Francis watches the slow pull of the tap.

It smells thickly of rum, the last of their stores, and Francis has to tuck his chin to his chest in order not to revisit the cured meat he had eaten prior to walking out onto deck. He can feel the music behind his eyes, not at all pleasantly, an army of sensation after nothing but the quiet voice of his steward and the creak of the ice threatening the bow. 

“Captain?” Jopson says, turning to him with concern, breaking through his quiet suffering. Francis vows to see this man medaled for his efforts, if English soil is to be in their future again. He presses on in lieu of reply.

A shot breaks through the music and Francis turns to it, less of an inherent curiosity and more his duty as captain, a habit. He worries. Their armory has seen far too much use.

Men are hollering, cheering as they wrestle like dogs on the ground. They grasp onto thighs and hoist each other into the air, onto shoulders. It’s all cheer, and no one but himself sees just how improper this is for men of their stature. Another shot in the air, a tiny hole in the tent’s roof, noise for the sake of noise. What of the bear?

Francis catches sight of James in disguise. Carried above the crowd in celebration of something Francis has missed. Roman red and gold and triumphantly bellowing. For the few honest seconds before James spots him, he is a man Francis does not recognise as his second. 

Drunken and genuine, James is laughing as he is carted around. Francis sees a boy instead of a captain, a sheet pulled back on James’ character. There’s no snark, no dramatisation, no reputation to uphold here. He looks years younger, deep-set laugh lines, joyous and authentic.

The importance of Carnivale is clear to Francis then. A method of escapism with an alcoholic accelerant. An escape from responsibility, and from the pull of home. From loss and from suffering. From present. From future. 

There are no men in the world that deserve it more. 

When James finally sets his eyes on Francis, his face falls so heavily that it looks like he has been physically pained. He is carried past, the weight of the expedition back on his shoulders. James knows he is responsible for exactly how primitive Francis’ men are acting, and that an event of this scale would not have been passed by the Captain, if Francis had been fit to hear the pitch. 

Jopson is too slow to push him back this time, and Francis’ front is dampened with spirits what appears to be a slurring James Reid. He is hurried away, before he can do any more damage and Francis is thrown out of his James related thoughts by the pinching smell of rum dripping from his coat. Jopson apologises for something that is hardly his fault. Francis waves him off, with the imperative intention of following where the men had carried his second before they are all but lost to the congregation. 

He feels less aggrieved as he looks around the dining tent and sees them simply as happy men, as opposed to men of rank, watching as they go about humiliating country. 

The marine, William Heather, has been stood in the corner of the room with an unproportionately sized paper crown over his head in order to hide his exposed skull, red wax over his eyes like coins over a deadman’s. There is a man Francis doesn’t recognise tending to him as though he is still present, feeding him with a spoon as one might a child. His throat is massaged and it’s tender in a way that Francis can’t tear his eyes from. His men that care for each other as they would their own kin. It’s more soberering than the three weeks spent sweating out alcohol.

He must look out of sorts - feels out of sorts - because Jopson is at his elbow again, follows his gaze and says “Let me take you back, sir” just as he would his laudanum dependent mother. 

There was comradery on his previous expeditions - years spent on a ship with the same handful of men promised that, but the impossible things they had witnessed, the weight of their losses, how uncertain their future; Francis had seen no crew like this, with such a capacity for love. For Sir John, for each other. 

“Sir?” Jopson jostles his arm, and Francis turns to catch a worried look. They continue on. 

Francis pulls back the tent flap onto a dimly lit room. A cauldron sits in the middle, heated underneath by their steam engine coal supply. There’s two men brewing in it like soup, a third man with a ladle mixing so it keeps warm, and Francis assumes for a moment that he must still be seeing things, and that’s by far enough, this has tipped Carnivale over the edge and into lunacy.

He demands the men to get out of the pot and turns to face James, who has evidently been searching for him just the same. He has removed his helmet, which Francis is grateful for as he can’t imagine being able to speak with him professionally with it on. 

He turns to leave, and James follows anxiously behind him. 

“Francis, this was my idea, all of it,” James says, as if it weren’t plain. “To get the men ready.” 

Francis stops at the edge of the dining tent again, tables full of their crew eating larger meals than they had all expedition, loud with liquor, and it’s been years since Francis has heard so many men laughing in the one room. Laughing at all. 

“I see now -” James continues, standing beside him, looking over the same hearty scene. “I see now that I should have been more vigilant.” 

“Ready?” Francis asks, already knows the answer. Knew since Jopson had spoken of it in vague detail at the edge of his sickbed. 

James looks at him in terrible silence. None of that joy from minutes ago remnant in his features. This is the James he knows, heavily shouldered duty. Francis wishes it were the opposite, wishes he knew more of James outside the Discovery Service. Wishes he knew James behind his own strict ordinance to maintain face, to know him as James without bells and whistles. Francis wants to know the James that throws parties with such grandeur as this, but in a place more appropriate, without the watchful eye of Queen and country. 

He leans in as James does, in case they are to be overheard.

“To walk out.”

To muster spirits, remind them of a home they need to make it back to. Praise and trust for captains that treat them well and reward them for their efforts. A peace has been reached, one that the crew had yet to know; they would not be sailing out of this. James’ leadership had given them that peace, using their own hands to craft supplies into frivolity had given them that peace. 

James helps him gather the men, and Francis climbs the wooden crates with a hand in Jopson’s for stability, to make himself heard.

Francis speaks of home, of sunrise, and of hope. Thinks, in that moment, with everything they have conquered thus far, with the work the crew has put in with their own hands, displayed around them, and with the help of James, dressed in gold at is side, who looks up at him in the same way as he had Sir John, that they could see this through. 

He would see them through. 

**Author's Note:**

> Online and desperately wanting to talk to someone about these very cold, very sad boys. My twitter is [@castiiron](https://twitter.com/castiiron)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Revelry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26040562) by [bephemos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bephemos/pseuds/bephemos)




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